(Original post on April 16, 2010.) Yesterday I got an email from an influential lobbyist from the pro-spending, pro-Prop 100 side. Since he's a nice guy and was polite, I'm not going to put his name in this post. He was arguing that Prop 100 is not fraulent:

Hello Tom,

Someone sent this email to me recently and I must confess I was shocked to see your misuse of the figures from the legislature’s contingency budget. I had the impression that we may disagree on some policy matters, but that you wouldn’t deliberately attempt to mislead people about facts.

The figures you cite regarding “education spending”--$429 million—is a REDUCTION amount, not an appropriation amount. Scroll down to the bottom of that column and it shows the Total Reductions to be made if Prop 100 doesn’t pass. This is not a document that describes spending. And, to assert without any facts or data, that the legislature will spend $171 million “on budget items other than primary and secondary education” is utterly false. Prop 100 is a Constitutional Amendment that says 2/3 of the revenue from the tax will be spent on education. That’s it--it’s in the Constitution, they have no choice but to follow it.

I respect your right to oppose the tax, but I encourage you to do it on the basis of facts, not false information.

Thanks for listening,
[Name redacted]

Here was my response:

Let’s take it step by step:

1) The Legislature has a list of threatened reductions to various programs if Prop 100 doesn’t pass.

1a) One of those threatened reductions is $429 million to ADE, which is primary and secondary education.

[The list is on pages 6 and 7 of this document: http://static.taxcutsforall.com/files/azfy2011enactedbudgetproposal031910.pdf]

2) The direct implication is that those items will be backfilled (i.e. appropriated) if Prop 100 does pass.

2a) The direct implication with regard to ADE is that $429 million will be backfilled (i.e. appropriated).

3) The plain language of the Prop 100 legislation says that “two-thirds of the revenues shall be appropriated for public primary and secondary education.”

[Read Prop 100 here--it is very short:
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/6s/bills/scr1001s.pdf]

4) Two-thirds of the anticipated $900 million in FY2011 revenues is $600 million. $600 million differs greatly from $429 million. It’s not just a rounding error.

5) University people are going around the state saying that Prop 100 will keep universities from getting certain budget cuts (the ones outlined in the list of threatened reductions), such as $40 million for the U of A. But where is that $40 million going to come from? Under the plain language of Prop 100, it cannot come from the two-thirds share ($600 million) that goes to K-12. It also cannot come from the one-third share ($300 million) that goes to health and human services and public safety. So, how is Prop 100 going to give $40 million to the U of A? If there are other monies which will come in from other sources to go to the U of A, those are by definition not Prop 100 revenues.

6) Also, your point about voter protection ignores the fact that budgets are fungible. The Legislature can appropriate $600 million of Prop 100 money for K-12—pretending to fulfill the voter mandate—and then defund $171 million worth of other line items in K-12.

Two* possible conclusions:

A) Prop 100 makes a fraudulent claim about where its revenues are going to end up, because the passage of Prop 100 will not effect a net increase of $600 million for K-12.

B) The items on the list of threatened reductions are not the items the Legislature actually plans to cut—in which case the list is fraudulent.

Please tell me where the hole is/holes are in my logic.

I’d like to claim credit for being the first person to figure out that Prop 100 is being sold to the public under fraudulent pretenses. But I understand that Rep. Sinema pointed out the fraud during floor debate.

In any case, this is fun. When this is over, let’s play some more semantic games.

*I blind-copied Byron from Goldwater, and he pointed out that both A and B could be true.

Also, I was on a panel this morning down at Channel 12 for the Sunday Square Off, and it's clear that no one on the panel defended the notion that the Prop 100 money was guaranteed to go to designated programs. Quite the opposite. The show airs this Sunday at 8 am, but you can see some of the video here:

We get into the Prop 100 fraud in the second segment:

http://www.azcentral.com/video/78494285001

For Liberty, Tom

Tom Jenney
Arizona Director
Americans for Prosperity
(Arizona Federation of Taxpayers)
www.aztaxpayers.org
tjenney@afphq.org
(602) 478-0146